Comparing texts from different contexts has enhanced our understanding of intertextual ideas, continuing to engage with modern audiences. Stories revolving around science fiction have remained timeless by tackling the various dangers of technology. Ray Bradbury's short story The Pedestrian (1951) describes the detrimental effects of technology on human interaction as it relates to consumerism and television, while Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron explains how a potential rebellion occurs under the oppression of freedom, in reference to the civil rights movement. Additionally, despite a different context, Kurt Wimmer's Equilibrium (2002) explores both ideas by alluding to the disasters of 9/11 and the First Chechen War, demonstrating how common ideas linked texts from different eras. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In The Pedestrian, Bradbury condemns overreliance on technology as leading to a loss of human connection. This reflects the rise of consumerism in the 1950s, which led to more than 60% of American households owning a television and developed the belief that society would be pacified by technology. Mr. Leonard Mead takes his nighttime stroll through a city where humans are hypnotized by television and are stopped by an automated car. His initial isolation is established through aural imagery and metaphor in "there were whispers and murmurs where a window in a tomb-like building was still open", revealing a faint presence of humans, forever confined to their homes. Humanity's over-reliance on technology is illustrated by the metaphor that "it was no different from walking through a cemetery", to create the feeling that humans have been "pacified" by television . Bradbury points out that this will only lead to a loss of human connection, where the tactile imagery of the car interior in "it smelled too clean and too strong" during Meads' arrest, indicates a lack of presence human and therefore interaction. Additionally, the personification of the car in "The Car Hesitated..." At the Psychiatric Center for Regressive Tendencies" justifies Mead's arrest by portraying human connection as a psychiatric illness in a world dominated by technology. Therefore, Bradbury highlights to readers how a reliance on technology can lead to a lack of human interactions. Despite a shift in context, Wimmer in Equilibrium critiques how creating a forced utopia by abandoning human emotion results in a loss of human connection. It mirrors the US Patriot Act of 2001, which suppressed individual privacy through extreme communications surveillance in fear of the post-9/11 attacks. John Preston is a victim of a future where human emotions are suppressed to prevent war. The opening montage of historical war footage provides a rationale for harnessing emotion, and the Father's voiceover "at the cost of the highs of human emotion we have suppressed its abysmal lows", reveals that human feeling was neglected to maintain the "peace". So where The Pedestrian explores humanity's dependence on television with reference to consumerism, Equilibrium considers humanity's dependence on Prozium with reference to America's Patriot Act. Ultimately, Wimmer points out that denying the right to human emotion via Prozium can..